A samurai constable of 大阪 (Osaka) was ordered to commit 切腹 (seppuku) because one of his subordinates had operated a business of killing birds with firearms. An apprentice was executed for wounding a dog. Citizens of 江戸 (Edo) — the most populous city in the world at the time — were required to address stray dogs in the street as 「お犬様」 (O-inu-sama), meaning "Honorable Lord Dog" or "Honorable Mr. Dog," and to speak to them with corresponding deference. According to the logic of the law, swatting a fly in front of the wrong official could result in exile.

This was the Japan of 徳川綱吉 (Tokugawa Tsunayoshi), the fifth shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, who began issuing his 生類憐みの令 (Shōrui Awaremi no Rei) — the Edicts on Compassion for Living Things — in 1687. He was 41 years old. He had become shogun in 1680 upon the death of his brother 家綱 (Ietsuna), and he was, in many respects, a capable and cultured ruler — a Confucian scholar, a patron of the arts, a man who tried to reduce the violence of a society still organized around the sword. But he had a problem that no amount of policy could fix: no male heir. And his Buddhist adviser, the Shingon monk 隆光 (Ryūkō), had an explanation for this. Tsunayoshi had been born in the Year of the Dog. His suffering, Ryūkō explained, was the karmic consequence of having killed living things in a prior life. His devout mother 桂昌院 (Keishōin) reinforced this interpretation. And so the edicts began.

At first, the laws targeted dogs — the most visible stray animals in Edo, a city where dogs roamed in numbers that horrified foreign visitors. The edicts forbade abandoning a sick dog, harming a dog, or failing to report an injured stray to the appropriate authorities. A government enforcement office was created: the 生類奉行 (Shōrui Bugyō), Commissioner for Living Things, which processed complaints and pursued violators. Over time the laws expanded: cattle, horses, birds, fish, insects, and shellfish all fell under the shogun's protection. Over 100 individual edicts were issued across Tsunayoshi's 23-year reign.

The punishments had no proportionality. Harming a dog was a capital offense. The samurai officer of Osaka ordered to cut open his own stomach for his subordinate's bird-killing business was not an isolated case. Ten individuals of samurai rank were punished — variously executed, exiled, or ordered into seppuku — in connection with that single incident. Commoners received banishment or death. A man of any class could be destroyed for a moment of thoughtless cruelty toward an animal.

The result was predictable. Because citizens feared the consequences of reporting sick or dangerous dogs, no one reported them. Because no one reported them, the population of strays exploded. By 1695, the stray dog problem had become so severe — the smell alone was reportedly intolerable — that a new solution was needed. Tsunayoshi ordered the construction of government kennels at 四谷 (Yotsuya), 大久保 (Ōkubo), and 中野 (Nakano). The facilities covered approximately 93 hectares in total. The Nakano compound, the largest, housed somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 dogs. They were fed rice and fish — the same staple diet as a working-class Edo resident. The construction and annual feeding costs have been estimated by modern historians at the equivalent of roughly $170 million USD. The funds came, in part, from taxes levied on the townspeople whose own households were sometimes going hungry.

Above the compound, in effect if not in literal signage, the dogs bore an honorific that commoners themselves were never granted.

The samurai of Edo — men whose identity was built on the sword, on the right to kill, on a hierarchy in which their lives were demonstrably worth more than those below them — found themselves in a world where a dog's life was legally worth more than their honor. The absurdity was not lost on anyone. But the shogunate's power was absolute, and no one who said so aloud lived to repeat it.

Tsunayoshi died in February 1709. His death was attributed to disease; rumors of poisoning by his wife or concubine circulated and were never confirmed. His successor 徳川家宣 (Tokugawa Ienobu) abolished the Edicts on Compassion for Living Things within the year. The Nakano dog compound was dismantled. Peach trees were planted on the site, and it became a public garden. The people of Edo celebrated with a relief that nearly two centuries of later historical accounts have preserved intact.

Modern historians have begun to rehabilitate Tsunayoshi. His edicts, however grotesque in their application and however devastating to the people who suffered under them, were among the first animal welfare legislation in world history. They measurably reduced cruelty to animals in Edo. Some scholars now read him not as a madman but as a genuine idealist — a man whose moral intuitions were a century ahead of their institutional framework, expressing themselves through the only instrument he knew: total power. Whether that reading is generous or accurate is a question history has not resolved.